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Speed
Dating: The Smarter, Faster Way to Lasting Love
I think this book is GREAT!
I really enjoyed reading it a lot. The author's style is
very easy to read and yet offers solid, practical advice
about how to avoid the pitfalls of dating and making bad
choices in today's dog eat dog singles world. Lots of
great, interesting first hand accounts from both the
authors and people they know. I think that this book is
a MUST for all singles, whether you are 19 or 59, male
or female, a religious person or a non-religious person
- it doesn't matter. This book has something important
to say to everyone. As a man, I feel I particularly
benefited from the insights I got into women - better
than the Mars-Venus stuff. My only question is: Why
didn't they write this book years earlier when I started
dating?! A top notch book that every single person
should read.
Speed Dating gives valuable information about locating
your soul mate without waiting precious time. Many
factors go into finding that special mate. Authors
Yaacov and Sue Deyo advise inner personal qualities as
more important than immediate physical chemistry.
In addition, they stress
the importance of having goals for yourself as well as a
relationship. It is emphasized that no person is perfect.
However, the authors advise that each person should
determine which traits in a mate are extremely necesary
and others are not necessary. The illustrations that
support these points are excellent.
This is an excellent book
to re-read to further teach yourself good dating habits.
It is a little basic in spots, but most open minded
people can learn a great deal of Speed Dating.
If you think "Speed Dating" is going to be
about those relatively new round-robin events you may
have been hearing about lately where people get 6 or 10
mini-dates of something like 7 or 10 minutes duration
each in one evening, that would be logical and yet you'd
be wrong. Even though the authors claim to be the
inventors of those now-popular events, and to have a
decade's worth of experience putting such events on,
this book isn't about that. It only gets eight
superficial pages in the appendix, six of `em about the
rules for such events. This is too bad because it would
have been interesting to get the low-down on these
things from some seasoned experts.
Instead, the book is
about a general, goal-directed dating philosophy based
heavily on the Jewish Talmud (book of wisdom) which is
designed to help you find - you guessed it - your "soul
mate". Yes, it's another one of those kinds of
books. It turns people/men into relationship objects and
dating into work, helping one develop the equivalent of
a "Man Plan". (Yes, the book tries to be
gender neutral but it's clearly aimed at a female
audience.) The goal, of course, is that holy grail of
modern womanhood, marriage and happily-ever-after-land.
One wonders when dating
became so rule-laden. Even though the book is not very
long, not to mention that it's broken down into inane
bite-sized pieces, it doesn't seem probable that anyone
trying to keep all this well-worn and old-fashioned
advice in their head (if they don't already know the
schtick) would be a very good date. It's especially
annoying that the author's opinions are expressed as
absolutes with continual cheery guarantees of eventual
success if you just be yourself and do what they tell
you to.
Among the sillier ideas
presented is the one about developing a "dating
team" of qualified adults to help you prepare for
the big day and disassemble the happenings afterword.
There are even questions to ask on dates, as one zooms
in on whether he is The One.
I also thought their
"key aspects of the personality" chart, which
appeared a couple of times, was mostly bogus based on
what I've studied about psychology. Doesn't the average
consumer, in this world of nearly limitless choices,
believe strongly that their possessions (the outermost
and therefore least significant circle in their diagram)
reflect their core values (the innermost circle in the
diagram)? But the authors don't bother themselves with
such considerations. Again, they simply state their
half-baked notions as The Way It Is.
Books like this are one
of the reasons *why* "today's dating scene can be
brutal" (the book's very first sentence). But, hey,
even a crummy strategy is better than none at all. It
worked for them -- though I got the impression they
developed all these ideas *after* getting married -- so
it could work for you too. Dream on IMO.
Buy
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